Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 53

Tsunade stood at the tree line, eyes fixed on the encampment spread out below us like a military infection. Four tents in a loose circle, cooking fires trickling smoke into the afternoon air, sentries wandering the perimeter looking bored.

My clone spam actually worked. I watched her study the layout for what had to be the third time in two minutes.

"Your clone spam wasn't half bad," she admitted, which from Tsunade was basically a standing ovation. "Produced results, even if it was far slower and far less efficient than using an actual sensor."

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for the glowing endorsement, sensei."

"Get ready," she said, already shifting into a predatory stance that meant someone was about to have a very, very bad day.

I held up a hand. "Or hear me out, I could just send in some clones and blow the entire camp to oblivion. Take every shinobi inside with it. Quick, efficient, nobody has to get their hands dirty. Well, except for the people getting blown up, but that's really more of a them problem."

She stared at me in complete silence. Just... stared. Like I'd suggested we solve world hunger by teaching rabbits to cook themselves.

"That's plan Z," she said, using that tone teachers reserve for explaining why glue isn't food. "First we grab someone alive for intel. Preferably whoever's in charge. Then we can discuss the wholesale slaughter."

I sighed. "Too much labor. But fine, we'll do this the hard way."

"The professional way."

"Same thing."

Together, we approached the camp. She moved like a predator, and I tried to match her pace without making too much noise. The sentries never saw us coming, one moment they were scanning the forest for threats, the next they were out cold and bleeding in the dirt.

Sometimes I wondered if being a shinobi was just elaborate murder with better PR.

……

Katsuo smoothed out the crumpled letter, reading his daughter's sloppy handwriting for the third time that day. The paper was soft from handling, the edges worn from being folded and unfolded whenever he had downtime between patrols.

[Daddy, when are you coming home? Mama says you're fighting bad people but I miss you. I learned to write your name! See? KATSUO. I drew us a picture too. That's you with the big sword and me and Mama by our house. The flowers are for you because Mama says you like them.]

A crude drawing in charcoal covered the bottom half of the page, three stick figures standing in front of a lopsided house, with what might have been flowers scattered around their feet. His daughter had drawn him taller than the house, with arms that reached nearly to the ground. In the picture, all three figures were smiling.

He folded the letter carefully and tucked it back into his vest pocket, close to his heart. Two more weeks, maybe three, and this mission would be over. He'd go home to his wife's cooking and his daughter's laughter, teach her how to hold a kunai properly, listen to her practice writing letters.

Just had to keep his men alive long enough to—

The screaming shattered his peaceful thoughts like glass.

"Konoha!" someone yelled from across the encampment.

Katsuo had seen death before. Twenty-three years in Suna's military meant blood on your hands and nightmares that stuck around. But this? This wasn't war—this was butchery.

Two figures moved through his men like death itself. The blonde woman grabbed his man by the throat and slammed him into the ground so hard his ribcage folded with a wet crunch. Blood erupted from his mouth, painting the dirt red.

'My daughter's waiting for me,' he thought desperately, hand instinctively moving to the letter in his pocket. 'I have to get home.'

The blonde moved to her next target. Another chunin tried to run but she caught him in two strides. Her hand clamped down on his head like a vice, and she drove him face-first into the ground hard enough to crater the earth.

Katsuo burst from his tent, ninjato in hand, running through the numbers in his head. Every calculation reached the same conclusion: they were screwed.

'Think, think,' he told himself. 'Two of them. Fourteen of us. Has to be a way. Has to be. She's waiting for me to come home.'

One blonde woman who hit like a human wrecking ball. One dark-haired kid—looked maybe fourteen, weaving through Katsuo's people with a tanto that kept finding necks.

Fourteen Suna-nin. Mostly chunin, three jonin including himself. Against two enemies.

The numbers should have worked in their favor.

The reality was a slaughter.

The kid with the tanto was worse in some ways. Young but lethal, cutting down chunin like they were practice dummies. His blade found a chunin's throat in one clean stroke, and the man tumbled across the dirt, mouth still moving as his body collapsed in a geyser of blood.

'That could be me,' Katsuo realized, gripping his ninjato tighter. 'But it won't be. I have to get home. I have to survive this.'

He lunged for the kid, take out the smaller threat first, then deal with the monster. His blade swept toward the boy's neck, but somehow the tanto was already there. The blades danced, sparking and spinning.

The kid grinned at him. Actually grinned.

They traded strikes, thrust, parry, riposte, dodge. The boy fought like he'd been doing this his whole life. Every technique Katsuo threw at him got matched, countered, turned back. Their weapons clashed hard enough to rattle his bones.

'I have to win this,' he thought, the letter crinkling against his chest as he moved. 'She's waiting for me to come home.'

Feint high, slash low, Katsuo's blade swept toward the boy's ribs. The tanto dropped to block, but Katsuo was already moving, flowing into a thrust aimed at the kid's heart.

Steel punched through cloth and skin, sliding deep between ribs. Katsuo felt the familiar give of flesh parting, warm blood rushing over his hand.

"Got you," he breathed. 'I can go home. I can see my daughter again.'

The boy looked down at the ninjato buried in his chest. Then he looked up at Katsuo.

And smiled.

"Do you?"

No. No no no.

The kid's body started glowing. Chakra built inside him like a bomb about to go off.

The kid exploded.

The blast roared across the battlefield like bottled thunder. Katsuo used Shunshin at the last second, his form flickering away from ground zero, but the shockwave still caught him. His insides churned like someone had grabbed his organs and shaken them. His stomach twisted, blood rising in his throat with that metallic taste that meant things were broken inside. He dropped to one knee and coughed red across his lips.

The letter in his pocket felt warm against his chest, soaked with his own blood.

Through the haze, he saw another figure approaching. The same kid. Identical down to the last detail, except this one wasn't bleeding all over the dirt.

"Exploding clone," the kid said casually. "Pretty neat, right?"

Katsuo tried to speak, tried to say something, but only blood came out.

"Don't feel bad," the clone continued, kneeling beside him. "Lots of people fall for it. The exploding part usually comes as a surprise."

The tanto slipped between his ribs, angled up toward his heart. Katsuo felt the cold steel slide through flesh, felt his life draining out through the hole.

'I'm sorry,' he thought, hand pressing weakly against the bloodstained letter in his pocket. 'Daddy won't be coming home after all.'

Around the camp, the sounds of battle were dying down. Fewer screams. Fewer jutsu. Just the wet sounds of violence and the blonde woman's chill as she painted the forest in blood and bone.

In his fading vision, he could almost see his daughter's crayon drawing, three stick figures smiling together, flowers scattered around their feet. But now there would only be two figures in that house.

Fourteen Suna-nin had made camp that morning.

Zero went home.

……

From my perch in the tree, I watched Tsunade standing over a bundled-up jonin who looked like he'd been wrapped for shipping. The guy was trussed up tight enough that breathing probably counted as cardio. Blood dotted the bindings from a dozen shallow cuts, just enough to make him think twice about being difficult.

"This the leader?" my clone asked, prodding the unconscious shinobi with his boot.

She shrugged. "Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"He was giving orders when the fighting started. Could be the actual leader, could be some jonin with a loud mouth." She crouched down and checked his pulse. "Won't know until he wakes up and we have a chat."

The clone looked around at the carnage. Corpses scattered across the camp like broken dolls, blood soaking into the forest dirt, the smell of death already starting to mix with the lingering smoke from their cooking fires.

"Think he'll talk?"

She shot him a look. "Not my problem."

I sighed. "Just get him back to Konoha."

The clone mirrored my sigh, hauled the prisoner over his shoulder, and took off through the trees.

I dropped from the tree and hit the ground with a soft thud. Down here, the metallic stench of blood was thick enough to taste, competing with forest humidity and smoke from their abandoned dinner fires.

"So," I said, sidestepping what used to be someone's torso. "Mission accomplished?"

"Give the area another search." She was already heading for the tree line. "In case there's stragglers who were away from the camp."

"Stragglers." I nodded thoughtfully. "You know, that's an interesting word. Straggler. It implies someone who falls behind, but in this context, it means someone who got ahead. Ahead of the dying, that is. Which makes them behind in terms of participation, but ahead in terms of survival. So are they really stragglers, or are they the only ones who were paying attention?"

She paused and gave me a flat look. "Or maybe they just went to take a piss in the woods and got lucky.” She started walking again. "Some of them might have been out on patrol, or gathering intel, or doing any number of practical things."

"Speaking of practical things, shouldn't there be some kind of reward system for missions that go this well? Because let's be honest here, this went very well because of me."

"Did it? Because from where I'm standing, it went well because fourteen people are dead and one is tied up. The how was just window dressing."

"Window dressing that I provided. My clones, my intel—"

"Your job. Which you did adequately."

"Adequately?" I blinked. "That's it? Adequate? For what was basically a flawless operation?"

I created a dozen shadow clones with more force than necessary. "Fine. Then how about a nice dinner when we get back to civilization? You, me, somewhere with actual plates instead of camping gear. Consider it a mission celebration."

She rolled her eyes. "Let me guess, you're buying?"

"Obviously. What kind of gentleman makes his sensei buy her own victory meal?"

"The broke kind, usually."

"I'll have you know I'm financially stable. All that mission money has to go somewhere, and it's not like I have expensive hobbies. Unless you count good sake."

"So you blow your mission money on overpriced rice wine? Real mature financial planning there."

"Don't change the subject. Dinner. Yes or no?"

"Ask me again when you can make it through a mission without trying to negotiate rewards beforehand."

I sighed. "You're stingy, sensei. Here I am, offering to share quality time and good food, and you're acting like I asked you to adopt a stray dog."

The clones dispersed in all directions, and I turned back to her with a grin. "But the dinner offer stands. I'm very persistent when it comes to convincing stubborn senseis."

"I've noticed."

……

The stragglers turned out to be two chunin heading back from what looked like a scouting run. They saw my clones coming and tried to bolt, which would've been brilliant if they hadn't sprinted straight toward Tsunade's position.

The first guy made it maybe ten steps before she clotheslined him hard enough that his feet kept running for a solid second after his body quit. The second chunin went for the smart play and surrendered on the spot, which earned him an extra three seconds of life before she decided we were already carrying enough prisoners.

"That's probably all of them," I said. "Unless they sent someone really far out for supplies or—"

A scream echoed from the distance. Raw and desperate, someone was either dying badly or watching it happen up close.

"Or not." She was already heading toward the noise.

We found the source half a kilometer northeast, three more Suna-nin, freshly dead. Clean sword work, clean cuts that screamed professional rather than lucky. Standing over them was a Konoha jonin with white hair and a tanto that looked like it had just made some new friends.

"Sakumo." Tsunade's voice warmed up considerably. "Fancy meeting you out here."

"Tsunade-hime." He sheathed his weapon and bowed respectfully. "Wasn't expecting company."

"I was heading to the front lines, escorting a supply convoy through the area when we got hit." He gestured toward a cluster of rocks about fifty meters away. "A squad of Suna-nin came out of nowhere. My team’s securing the convoy, but a few of them broke off and ran this way."

"How many in the squad?" I asked.

He looked at me, then back at her. "Eight total. These three, and the five we dropped at the convoy site."

"Probably part of the group we just hit," she said. "We took down a fourteen-man camp about a kilometer west of here. Looks like they had people out on mission when we hit."

"Fourteen?" Sakumo raised an eyebrow. "That's a decent-sized operation for a harassment unit."

"That's what we thought. Captured their leader for intel." I created a dozen more clones and sent them fanning out. "Let me check if there are any more wandering around out here."

Watching someone my age casually throw around shadow clones definitely caught Sakumo's attention. I could see him reassessing—suddenly I wasn't just some kid tagging along. He was good at hiding it though, smoothly shifting his focus back to business.

"I count at least three more that scattered when we hit the convoy."

Within ten minutes, my clones had tracked down the rest, two more chunin and a jonin trying to circle back for another shot at the convoy. Between Sakumo's blade work and Tsunade's talent for turning people into corpses, the cleanup went fast.

"That should be all of them," I said as the last clone reported back. "Area's clear."

"Good." Sakumo sheathed his tanto and looked toward where his convoy was waiting. "We should move."

"Front lines?" Tsunade asked.

"Same direction you're heading, I assume. Mind if we travel together? Always better with backup."

She nodded. "Lead the way."

As we walked toward the convoy, I found myself replaying how Sakumo's blade had moved when he cut down those Suna-nin. Now that was real swordsmanship, not just swinging sharp metal around and hoping for the best.

The way he'd positioned himself when the first chunin charged, slight angle, tanto held in a middle guard that could go offensive or defensive in a blink. Classic European longsword principles scaled down for a shorter blade. Distance, timing, and that split-second read of when your opponent commits and leaves themselves wide open.

Wonder if he'd teach me if I asked. I immediately scrapped that idea. Probably not. Guy's got his own missions, his own problems, maybe even his own students. Can't just walk up to a master swordsman and ask for lessons like you're requesting directions to the bathroom.

Still, I could observe. Watch how he held the blade, how he moved his feet, how he transitioned between guards. Swordsmanship was like cooking in a way, you could learn a lot just by watching someone who knew what they were doing. The angle of the wrist, the timing of the step, the way the whole body moved as a unified system instead of just swinging an arm with steel attached.

Though observing and understanding are different things, I watched his stride, the way he carried himself. It's like seeing someone make perfect pasta and thinking you've got the technique down. You can see the motions, but the muscle memory, the tiny adjustments, knowing exactly when the timing's right, that only comes from actually doing it with someone who knows their stuff.

Maybe I could pick up a thing or two just from being around him. Sometimes the best lessons weren't formal instruction but just exposure to excellence.

And if nothing else, watching a master work was always educational. Even if I couldn't replicate it immediately.

……

The convoy wasn't much to look at, three wagons loaded with supplies, maybe twenty people total including civilians and escorts. We fell into formation with me walking beside Sakumo and Tsunade, trailing behind the main line while other shinobi spread out in a protective perimeter.

"So, Sakumo-senpai," I said, because calling him just 'Sakumo' felt too casual and 'Hatake-san' felt too formal, and there's a delicate social balance to these things that people don't appreciate until they get it wrong. "Are you returning from the front lines like Tsunade-sensei? Or is this your first deployment out there?"

He shook his head, adjusting his blade as we walked. "Actually, this is my first deployment to the western front. I was on a different mission before this—couldn't say where, obviously. Timing just worked out that I could escort the convoy."

Different mission. I nodded thoughtfully. Probably one of those mysterious ANBU things that involve a lot of sneaking around and very little paperwork afterward. The sort of mission where success is measured by how many people never find out it happened.

I glanced at Tsunade, who had this weird expression on her face. Like she was trying to remember something important but kept getting distracted by other thoughts. Or like she was holding in a burp.

"Sensei, what's wrong? You look like you're holding something. Do you need to use the bathroom?"

I was already dodging before I finished the sentence, years of experience had taught me to anticipate her reactions to my more helpful observations, but her hand still found the back of my head with a merciless thwack.

"That's what I get for caring," I muttered, rubbing my skull.

"Caring? You’ve got a strange way of showing it."

"You just had this look, like a puppy deciding whether to chew on the shoe or not."

"That was my thinking face."

"Puppies think too, you know. Very deeply, about chewing."

"You really don’t know when to stop, do you?"

"I'm not teasing. You just had that look like something was bothering you." I gestured at her face. "Brow all scrunched up, lips tight, pretty hard to miss."

She arched a brow. "So now I make funny faces?"

"Everyone does. Yours just happen to come with the threat of a flying fist."

Her mouth twitched. "Keep talking and you’ll find out how accurate that observation is."

Sakumo made a sound that might've been a chuckle. When we both looked at him, he cleared his throat and suddenly became fascinated with checking the convoy's formation.

"See?" I said triumphantly. "Even Sakumo-senpai thinks you're being unreasonable."

"I am not being unreasonable. You're being—" She stopped mid-word, exhaled, and shook her head. "Forget it. I lost track of what I wanted to ask Sarutobi-sensei about the situation up north. Too busy worrying about Danzo sniffing around my student."

"That’s...fair," I admitted, a little sheepish. "But hey, worrying suits you better than glaring. Glaring makes people think they’ve done something wrong."

"Maybe you usually have." She flicked my forehead with a finger.

"Ow. See? That’s exactly what I mean."

She gave me a sidelong look, equal parts exasperation and amusement.

"Don't encourage him," she warned when she noticed Sakumo’s grin.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said, though his tone suggested he was absolutely encouraging me. "Though you two do bicker like siblings."

"Siblings?" I blinked. "I prefer to think of us as an old married couple. She's the long-suffering wife, I'm the—"

"Pain in the ass," she finished, smiling sweetly while cracking her knuckles with ominous pops.

"—devastatingly charming husband, but your version works too," I said quickly, taking a strategic step away from her reach.

She dropped her hands and turned to Sakumo, suddenly serious. "Speaking of things I should have asked earlier, what's the situation up north? It must be quiet if they’re pulling you away. I don’t think the other major villages are considering jumping into this mess, but…"

Sakumo considered this as we walked, his eyes automatically scanning the forest around us, a habit that probably explained why he was still breathing after all these years. "The situation up north has actually started to improve. The Hokage reached out to Uzushiogakure for support, and they agreed to supply us with sealing tools, scrolls, and specialists. That backing has helped stabilize the smaller skirmishes with Kumo."

He nodded toward the convoy ahead of us. "Some of those Uzu sealing tools are actually what we're transporting right now."

Ah. The pieces clicked together with an almost audible snap. Why waste the White Fang on glorified babysitting duty when you could point him at enemy lines and watch him work? Because sometimes the package is worth more than the delivery boy, even when the delivery boy happens to be a living legend.

It was like using a master chef to deliver takeout, completely backwards unless the takeout was more valuable than whatever he could be cooking. Which begged the question: just how dangerous were these sealing tools that they warranted Konoha's apex predator as a courier?

I found myself studying the wagons like I’d just realized they weren’t hauling dumplings but live snakes. Somewhere in those unassuming crates were weapons that had probably never seen a chunin's hands, let alone made it down to the rank-and-file stationed in places like Kitaura. The good stuff stayed with the heavy hitters, people like my bastard of a father or Orochimaru, the ones actually trading blows with Kumo's elite instead of playing border patrol.

Made sense. You don't hand experimental explosives to the guy barely qualified to handle standard kunai. That's how you end up with accidental craters and very awkward conversations with the next of kin.

Dan mostly stayed in town with us, So we never would have seen the fancy stuff anyway. Different tier of warfare I guess?

"That's... actually encouraging," Tsunade said, and I could hear genuine relief creeping into her voice. "Uzushio's sealing techniques are no joke. If they're backing us, Kumo might think twice about escalating."

"That's the idea," Sakumo agreed. "Though you never know with lightning country. They're not always the most... predictable."

……

[Second-gen Clone POV - Land of Lightning]

The malicious chakra hit mid-note—hot and greasy, like someone threw old blood on a furnace, and half a breath later one of my strings gave up. It snapped, flicked my cheek—rude—and dangled off the biwa like it was done pretending to be charming. A few coins still clinked into the bowl. People love tragedy as long as it costs pocket change. The old man with three teeth laughed. A snot-crusted kid stared like I’d invented a new art form called Failing Loudly.

“Guess the string quit before I did,” I said, smiling blind.

The crowd liked that. I get it. Blind monk makes joke, still humble, makes you feel generous about the coin you were already going to give even if his music died mid-note. Land of Lightning town audiences have tastes. Mostly for grilled river fish and gossip, but I work with what I’ve got.

The malicious wave kept rolling, past the rooftops, through pine smoke and lines of drying fish, and ran its hands down my spine.

I smiled too long. The old man with three teeth stopped laughing.

I didn’t move for three seconds. If my cover was popped, something sharp would be on its way to shake hands with my kidneys. Nothing came. The street stayed a street. The world kept chewing.

“String broke,” I told the kid, who was still staring. “Happens when it gets tired of working, kind of like school.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, which is kid for Go away or do something cooler.

“I’ll fix it.” I slid the biwa into its soft sleeve, threaded my cane back under my arm, bowed around at the blurs of people I wasn’t actually blind enough to bump into, and shuffled off. Blind monk shuffle: heel-toe, polite, apologetic, faintly musical. People make room for you. No one wants bad luck skin.

The alley smelled like damp rope and cat. I set the cane down, adjusted the blindfold hanging loose around my neck, and fished the spyglass out of a hidden pocket in the instrument case. Brass, not pretty. Dented like a shinobi’s conscience. I’d bought the lenses from a merchant who swore they came from the Land of Snow and toasted our deal with stale rice wine. You have to pretend to trust people so they’ll sell you the good lies.

“Alright,” I told my reflection in the tube, which was mostly my own eye looking back like a traitor. “Let’s try not to make the headlines today.”

I crab-walked up a back stair to a rooftop, slid over the far side, then moved across a ridge line to the town’s edge.

Past the last house, the land got jagged in a hurry. Land of Lightning isn’t subtle. Gray teeth of rock. Needly pines. Wind that slaps. Thunderheads bullied the horizon like they owned it, and honestly, they do. If you’re a ninja from here, you grow up thinking anger is weather, not a choice.

I lay on my stomach on a ledge and put the spyglass to my eye. The mountain clearing sat like a scraped knee in the forest. In it, a bulky tan man stood shirtless to the waist, the sort of build you get from lifting things that don’t want to be lifted. Not “fat.” Thick. Like a temple pillar that decided it needed a tan. He had the presence of a guy people don’t say no to. Two Kumo-nin flanked him, masks hanging at their throats, eyes scanning. In front of them knelt an old man and a teenager, both ringed in chalk-white fuinjutsu lines that curved into each other like snakes.

The bulky man wasn’t alone. Two more shinobi stood opposite each other, forming a loose triangle with him around the ritual. Each held a sealing brush, dragging ink that bled into the dirt like veins spreading under skin. The three moved as one, their strokes knotting together as though performing surgery on something unseen.

I couldn’t make out every detail, but the shape had the right bones, spirals, nodes, the skeletal frame of a real sealing array. Even blurred by distance, the strokes seemed to chew light instead of reflect it. Like the earth didn’t want those marks but couldn’t spit them out.

The old man’s breathing rattled. The teenager kept swallowing like his mouth had forgotten how saliva works.

The bulky man lifted his hands. A prayer-bead cord was wrapped around one wrist, but they weren’t prayer beads, seals shaped into beads. He began to sway, and chakra flared again, mean and immense, a storm rising beneath the floorboards.

Resealing. Of course. Not a ceremony for good luck with crops. The extraction kills the old host ninety-nine times out of a hundred, and that “one time” is fiction told to children so they’ll go to sleep. I was still new to fuinjutsu, barely scratching the surface compared to the real experts but I wasn’t clueless enough to miss what this was. A transfer, plain as day. The only question was which monster they were moving. Two-Tails? Eight? Whatever. They'd all burn the same.

I grinned and felt the grin turn thin.

"Perfect." The word came out like a promise. Kumo breaking the world to keep it safe. Me breaking Kumo because I wanted to take something back. Revenge isn’t a healthy food group, but I eat a lot of junk.

I hopped down into the tree shadow and formed the seal. Crossed fingers, breath held.

Four Shinji slid out of me like thoughts I’d been saving for when it got dark. Same face, same stupid eyebrow I should get trimmed, same monk robes gone a little dusty. They looked at me, then at the mountains, then at each other because this is what we do. We always check who we are today.

“Alright, fun time,” I said. “I’m the Boss. You’re One, Two, Three, and I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter.”

“Four,” said Four.

“I stand by my naming scheme. Meditate. Split. Repeat. I want five-zero minimum.”

“One” sat down immediately, palms together like a saint who sold incense on the side. “Battery first. Got it.”

“Two” stretched his shoulders and made a face. “We’re at thirty percent of a me who had breakfast.”

“Be grateful. Some guys are born as boogers,” Three said. “What’s the play after multiplication, Boss?”

“We disturb the ritual,” I said flatly. “Push it off just enough so it fails. No neat transfer, no tidy handover. Monster gets loose, Kumo learns what it’s like to be the nail instead of the hammer.”

I pictured the forest in blue fire, the town screaming, the sealing master’s face when his perfect work came apart in his hands. I liked that image more than I should, which is exactly why people like me don’t get retirement plans.

“Shoes in the gears,” I said. “Not confusion this time. Collapse. They don’t get a new cage.”

Two let out a low whistle. “You want the bijuu to throw a tantrum in their backyard?”

“Exactly. And while it’s stomping the furniture, one of you puts on a mask, plays the dutiful Kumo shinobi, and starts shouting for civilians to evacuate. Far enough from the mountain to look like a safety precaution. Just in case the rampage comes downrange.”

Four raised an eyebrow. “We saving people now?”

“We’re saving me,” I said. “Last thing I need is them pinning civilian casualties on a mystery monk. If half the town hears a ‘Kumo nin’ tell them to run, then the official story writes itself. Tragic sealing accident. Unfortunate loss of control. No outsider in sight.”

The clones rolled their eyes. Yeah, right. Like attacking a sealing ceremony wouldn't immediately scream 'outside interference' no matter what cover story they used. Peak tsundere behavior.

"Alright," I said, ears definitely not red. "Let's ruin their day."